


The Fragility of Meatbags

by orphan_account



Category: Futurama
Genre: ("kind of" awful is being generous tbh), (but also touches of humor???), (or... spaceship), Airplane Crashes, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Next Generation, Tragedy, the planet express crew being themselves aka kind of awful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 02:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7740634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a spaceship crash killed Fry and Leela, the last thing Bender was expecting was to be left with their two-month-old child.</p><p>(A fic that attempts to balance Futurama's horrible and beautiful humor with a very tragic situation.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fragility of Meatbags

Humans were so _fragile_.

Bender had always known that. In fact, he’d relished how superior he was to the meatbags he worked with. Even after he found out he wasn’t immortal, he got to be so much more durable than his friends. It felt great.

Until the crash.

After Fry and Leela’s death, Bender had been ready to just end it all, but every time he approached a suicide booth, it reminded him of first meeting Fry, and some part of him knew that the idiot would want him to stick around, so he did.

Hermes callously took delight in going through Fry and Leela’s will and other documents – well, mostly Leela’s. Fry had never really gotten things together, even after Tasha came along, as Amy noted while she and Bender attempted to assist Hermes.

“You’d think once they had a kid, Fry would have at least written out a will,” she sighed. “How do we figure out what to do with his things?”

Bender glared at her. “They’re staying right where they are.”

Amy shot Bender a glare right back, but then her expression changed to a weary one. “Yeah, sure. You’d just steal it back if we gave it to the Professor or anyone, anyway.”

“You got that right.”

They fell back into silence again after that. Eventually, Amy stepped away from Hermes’s desk and took out her phone. Between her apathy and Hermes just being excited to do some paper-pushing, Bender was pissed. That wasn’t too bad, though, because feeling pissed was better than feeling the emptiness that had taken over him the past week. Still, when Hermes exclaimed ‘oh, amphibian of the Caribbean’ and nearly fell out of his chair, Bender was just not in the mood.

“What did you find, Hermes?” Amy asked.

“You know, I’m not sure I should even say!”

Amy looked confused and circled around the desk. She slipped her phone in her pocket and leaned down to look at the paper in Hermes’s hands. “There is _no way_ Leela was on board with this.”

Bender looked over. “On board with what?” Amy and Hermes exchanged looks, but kept quiet. “Spill it, meatbags, or I swear to God…” He trailed off with a bending gesture that held such fury it looked more like snapping something in two.

Hermes looked back to the paper. “That _is_ Leela’s signature…”

“Yeah, but – ”

“Oh my God, if you two don’t start talking, I’m just gonna – ”

“Bender, you’re Tasha’s godfather,” Amy said.

Bender stood dead still. Fry and Leela had decided he should raise their child if anything happened to them? But… Why? It was true that Leela had been very impressed with how he’d raised Ben, and Fry was a trusting idiot, but this was _their_ child. Their _human_ child. How was he, a robot, supposed to raise her? How was he supposed to react to this news?

“How _dare_ they?!” Bender found himself shouting out loud. Wasn’t it bad enough that they left him? Now he had to raise their child, who would just remind him of who he’d lost? “No. Hell _no_.”

“But Bender, mon, this is what they wanted,” Hermes said.

“Well, maybe I’m just sick of having to think about what they wanted! Maybe I – Ah, screw you guys!” It was a usual thing for Bender to say, but was said without his usual flippancy. For once – probably the first time either of the humans in the room could remember – he sounded _hurt_.

Bender stumbled backwards out of Hermes office and took off at a run. Fuck it, fuck it. He was supposed to just get better and take care of a two-month-old child now? No. That wasn’t happening. Everyone else was _handling_ this, and he just couldn’t. Now he knew how Fry and Leela had always felt with him, adding guilt to his grief. But from Hermes diving right in to the wills to the Professor already having found a replacement captain and on the search for a new goddamn delivery boy to Amy just being happy that her fon-fon-whatever _was_ said new captain, everyone else seemed to have some sort of way to cope. Hell, even the pathetic _Zoidberg_ had found comfort in fucking _ruining the corpses_ while attempting an autopsy, like they didn’t already _know_ Fry and Leela had died when the ship had crashed.

This was _so_ unfair, and he was getting to a suicide booth _right now_ , and he could finally get some goddamn –

“Hey, Bender, watch it!”

In his rush to get away from Hermes’s office, Bender hadn’t realized he was plowing through several wooden blocks on the floor. What the fuck…? He visually followed the trail of blocks to the couch he’d spent so many hours on with Fry and Leela, and there was Cubert – now a teenager who puberty apparently saw fit to be _extra_ cruel to – sitting with his many-times-great aunt. Or, well, whatever. With Tasha, who was happily throwing blocks to the ground.

“Watch _what_ , meatbag?”

“I had those _arranged_ , duh,” Cubert explained, as Bender leaned down to see that the blocks each represented a different chemical. “I’m trying to teach Tasha something. She’s so _dumb_.”

“She’s barely two months old, what the hell do you expect?” Bender snapped. “And why do you _care_?”

Cubert gave a snort. “With the Professor and I as her only living family, Tasha will be my little sister now. I can’t have an _idiot_ for a little sister.”

Oh, no. _Hell_ no. Bender felt like he was short-circuiting. The Professor, raising Tasha? Cubert, taking the girl under his wing? _Nononononononono…_

“Listen up, punk-ass meatbag, they named _me_ Tasha’s godfather. So screw learning about chemistry, unless she’s learning to brew beer.”

“That’s really a microbiology thing – ”

“Shut the hell up!” Bender snapped, scooping Tasha up off the couch. He’d have gulped if he could as he made sure to cradle her head just right, as Leela had shown him not that long ago at all. “I’m going to raise this kid! You… You got that, Tasha? I’m going to raise you _so hard_ ,” Bender’s voice dropped to an almost-whisper.

“Fine, whatever,” Cubert said. “You or the Professor. Either one of you would ruin her, just in different ways.”

“The Professor raised _you_ , dumbass,” Bender pointed out.

“Barely,” Cubert said, rolling his eyes.

“Whatever, I don’t care about your daddy issues!” Bender said, cradling Tasha in his arms as he returned to Hermes’s office. He had to get this all sorted out.

Ultimately, Tasha never called Bender ‘dad’; she was always taught to simply call him Bender. More surprising was the fact that Bender never changed Tasha’s surname to Rodriguez. No, she remained Tasha Munda Fry. It wasn’t until she started talking to other children her age that she realized this was unusual. When she asked why their family unit functioned as it did, she got a simple answer.

“I’m _not_ your dad, Tash.” Bender didn’t even look up from channel surfing to explain this.

“I think you are. You make sure I have food and stuff.”

“Nah. If anything, I’m more like your irresponsible uncle.”

Four-year-old Tasha seemed to actually deflate, her purple hair forming a curtain around her face. “Oh.”

“Hey, Tash, come on, that doesn’t mean you’re not my kid,” Bender hurried to point out, finally looking at the child. “It’s just… We’ve talked about this. You _had_ parents. And they were great.” A beat, and he forced what passed for a smile on his robotic mouth. “Not as great as me, of course, but… Pretty great.”

“Do you miss them?”

Bender considered lying, but when he looked at Tasha, he found that, for once, he couldn’t. “Yeah.”

“Why don’t I?” Tasha sniffed, looking concerned.

“You were a baby when they died, Tash.”

Tasha scrambled onto Bender’s lap, looking up at him with her eye opened wide. “Tell me about them?”

He didn’t want to. He _really_ didn’t want to; Bender tried to avoid thinking about Fry and Leela as often as possible, which was very difficult considering how much Tasha looked like her mother. (She had Fry’s nose, though, and Bender supposed she was lucky for that. Less lucky was the fact that, intelligence-wise, she also seemed to lean more towards her father’s side, but hey, who really cared? Bender loved her all the same… Not that he’d ever used those _exact_ words with her.)

“Please, Bender?” Tasha begged, bringing the robot back from his thoughts. Bender wasn’t the type of guardian who could never say no to his kid, but this was clearly so important to Tasha. Bender sighed.

“Your dad always wore this stupid red jacket. And your mom was a sewer mutant. Did I ever tell you that?”

“Um, no.”

“Oh. Well, yeah, you’re half-mutant.”

“Okay.”

“She was a total buzzkill, your mom. Well, when we were working, anyway. Uh, most of the time. But… She was Leela. She was… I…” Bender trailed off with a fake cough that passed for real with the four-year-old Tasha. “You know.”

“I don’t think I do. P.S. Are you getting sick?”

Bender laughed a bit, despite everything. “Why have you been doing that lately? The P.S. thing?” At least the question meant he got to glide past explaining his complicated relationship with Leela – they had been friends, of course, but Fry had been his _best_ friend and Leela had been Fry’s _partner_. Bender was no robosexual, but that had always kind of hurt. He didn’t like sharing Fry’s attention.

“Kif was teaching me how to write emails.”

“Yeah, but Tash, you don’t say it when you’re tal – Eh, forget it. Anyway, speaking of Kif, your mom used to do his job.”

“She flew the ship?” Tasha gasped. “ _Wo-ow_. What did my daddy do?”

Bender chuckled fondly. “He was the delivery boy. Do you know what that is?”

“Nope!” Tasha giggled.

“Really? You don’t know what a delivery is? We get food delivered, like, every night.”

“I know what a _delivery_ is.”

Bender sighed. “Put it together, Tash,” he said, impatience in his voice.

“…Oh! Oh, okay.”

“There ya go.”

“So Dad delivered beer and juice boxes and pizza?”

“Well, no,” Bender admitted. “Planet Express just delivered whatever crap people asked us to send out.”

“Card game?”

“Craps, Tash. That’s Craps. Come on, kid, you have to _try_.”

“Sorry,” Tasha mumbled.

“Crap is just, you know, junk. Random shit.”

“Then you should say random shit. I know what _that_ is.”

“Okay, fine.” Bender wasn’t sure if he was getting annoyed or amused. Both, probably. “We just delivered whatever random shit people asked us to send out.”

“And my dad was the one who went to people’s doors?”

“Well, I guess he was supposed to be.”

“Huh?”

“It was usually a group effort. Your dad was really good at getting into trouble.”

“Like you!”

“No, I’m really good at getting _out_ of trouble,” Bender huffed. “There’s an important difference. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

“Ah, one of _those_ kinds of things,” Tasha said, in a voice that – coming from a child – could pass for sage. Or, at least, was clearly trying to. “Well, tell me more about them. Stuff I’ll understand _now_ , please.”

“We called your dad Fry. And… Leela might have actually been your mom’s last name, too. I’m still not sure how that worked. Anyway, the three of us had a lot of fun.”

Tasha considered this, looking solemn. “I wish I could have had some fun with them.”

Bender let his eyes shut, and hugged Tasha to his torso. “Me too, Tash.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, a few things!
> 
> 1) Tasha's first name comes from the character Natasha Yar, also known as Tasha, on Star Trek: The Next Generation. I like the idea that Fry wanted to name his daughter after a Star Trek character, but didn't remember that Tasha had a full first name. Because, you know, he's Fry. Tasha's middle name, of course, comes from Leela's mother.
> 
> 2) So this wasn't meant to be a one-sided Fender fic _per say_ , but it's there if you want it to be, I guess? It's hard for me not to write Bender as into Fry at this point, honestly.
> 
> 3) I hope this didn't seem OOC, especially regarding Bender. I was actually incredibly careful to make sure his actions and words in this fic were all inspired by canon behavior. Which I guess is what fanfic always does, but I was _extra_ incredibly careful, in this case.
> 
> 4) Despite the sadness, I really enjoyed writing this, so I hope people like reading it! :)


End file.
